


Consulting for the Defense

by IodoRor



Category: Hannibal (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6392680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IodoRor/pseuds/IodoRor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will's hands are tied while he's behind bars at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Fortunately, the world's greatest consulting detective may be able to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consulting for the Defense

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wondered what it would be like to see Sherlock face off against Hannibal Lector. I've also always wondered why Will didn't just hire somebody to look into the case for him rather than sending Beverly into danger.

“Just tell me what happened from the beginning.”  
  
Dr. Will Graham grimaced and motioned as if to adjust the eyeglasses he was not wearing. The chains around his wrists rattled, and Graham lowered his hands slowly back onto the metal examination table. Discomfort, Sherlock noted. The man would not meet his eyes.  
  
“...I threw up an ear.” Graham said. Sherlock cocked one elegant eyebrow.  
  
“An ear.” He repeated.  
  
“Abigail Hobbs’s ear. She was a...friend of mine.” Graham said haltingly, “I killed her dad.”  
  
An interesting way to frame the successful capture of a notorious murderer, the first of many cases to have earned the now-infamous criminal profiler international attention. It appeared the man cared little for the recognition he’d earned, and though Graham displayed intense discomfort Sherlock did not believe he was, at this time, being untruthful. Fascinating.  
  
“Hm, yes. I read about that one.” Understatement. “Mr. Garret Jacob Hobbs, serial cannibal.”  
  
The man’s expression stilled. His hands were relaxed now, forcibly so, but Sherlock noted an increased tension in his shoulders. Discomfort again, but different. Worn. Resigned?  
  
“I was the first agent on the scene. Mr. Hobbs had a knife to Abigail’s throat and I shot him. Ten times.”  
  
“Ten?”  
  
“I’m not a great shot. I’ve been practicing.” One corner of Graham’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a self-deprecating smile. Sherlock suppressed a scowl.  
  
“I see. Please, continue.”  
  
“I...haven’t been myself lately. I’ve lost time. Hallucinations.” The man’s voice was low, hesitating. Careful, too, as though Graham had turned each word over in his head before speaking it aloud. “I thought it would pass, that it would get better. Then one morning I woke from a nightmare and I vomited. And there was the ear. I have no idea how it got there.”  
  
Sherlock scoffed. “Standard psychotic break. Unfortunate, but not worth my time.”  
  
The space in between Will Graham’s eyebrows tightened very slightly in irritation. Promising.  
  
“That’s what I thought too, until the police found remains from four other people in my fishing lures.” He said.  
  
“Fishing lures?”  
  
“I’m a fly fisherman. I make my own lures, usually out of bird feathers and rabbit fur. When the police were combing through my house, they found lures made of human teeth and hair. The remains were found to have belonged to the victims of several unsolved murders, all of which I’ve been called to consult on.”  
  
“Multiple psychotic episodes, then.”Sherlock pasted a look of disinterest and boredom on his features and slouched back in his chair. “We’re sitting in a mental institution, if you hadn’t noticed.” How badly did Will Graham want his services? A lot could be told from a man’s reaction to being dismissed.  
  
Graham did not appear perturbed, however. He leaned forward and bent forward his head, clasping his hands in front of him. The very picture of grief.  
  
“Abigail I could believe.” He rasped, “I loved her, and I would never forgive myself, but I could believe it. But I know I was in my right mind when Cassie Boyle was killed.”  
  
“Cassie Boyle?”  
  
“The first known victim of the Copycat Killer. Her body was found during my first case back in the field, impaled on a deer’s antlers like one of Garret Jacob Hobbs’s victims. But it was all wrong. Hobbs used every bit of his victims. He felt that by killing them and using their parts he was honoring them. But Cassie Boyle was put on display, like a trophy. It wasn’t the same killer. And it wasn’t me.”

Will Graham brought his head up, then, and met Sherlock’s eyes for the first time since being escorted into the visiting chambers. “But I know who it was, now.”  
  
“Do you? Enlighten me.”  
  
“Hannibal Lector.”  
  
“Your psychiatrist.”  
  
“My friend. When I escaped from custody, I went to him. I was confused, panicked. He agreed to drive me back to Minnesota, where Abigail went missing. He said I might remember killing her.”  
  
“It says here you led him there at gunpoint.” Sherlock said, referring for the first time to the incident report sitting open on the table in front of him.  
“I had a gun with me, but I didn’t point it at him until later. It was his idea to go to Minnesota.”  
  
“When did you use the gun, then?”  
  
“Any BAU agent could have reproduced these crimes, but the Copycat Killer didn’t reproduce. He expanded. He treated each murder like a work of art, like a piece of music he could reinterpret and sing back to the original murderer. Variations on a theme. That takes talent. Understanding.”

Graham hesitated, “there was only one person I knew of, besides myself, who was capable of that level of...of empathy with the disturbed minds we encounter. And he was standing right next to me.”  
  
“So you pulled your gun.”  
  
“I pulled my gun.” He agreed, “But I was still unstable. Confused. I wasn’t certain I could trust my own deductive process. But it felt right. It felt true.”

Graham broke eye contact then, absently adjusting a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes. “Then Jack came in and--well, of course I looked like a madman. He shot me there in the Hobbs’s kitchen, and I woke up here.”

“You are a madman.” Sherlock snapped, but his eyes were fixed on the inmate with a bloodhound’s fascination. “You haven’t a shred of evidence.”

“That’s why I’ve called you, Mr. Holmes.”


End file.
